


The Dead Don't Belong With The Living

by ThePenguinOfDeath



Category: Divergent (Movies), Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: (But close enough), (Not Exactly), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Character Death, Dead People, F/M, Ghosts, Headaches & Migraines, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 14:11:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4062919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePenguinOfDeath/pseuds/ThePenguinOfDeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? - Edgar Allen Poe</p><p>Tobias saw his first dead person at his grandmother's funeral aged thriteen. At twenty-two, he's almost adjusted to it. But something seems different about this girl...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dead Don't Belong With The Living

**Author's Note:**

> At 9am tomorrow I have a seriously important exam. It's 10:30 and I've spent the past two hours writing a story about talking to dead people. I have seriously skewed up priorities.
> 
> In this AU, Tris is dead. There's talk about how she died which could be triggering for some people. I've listed the mode of death at the end as it's a spoiler, but if you're worried, please check or just don't read this at all. There's also mentions of Tobias's canonical abuse from his father - again, if that's triggering, please don't read this. 
> 
> Enjoy - and I apologise for OOC-ness but it was necessary to fit with how AU this is.

Tobias ran a hand through his hair as he left the office, a migraine just starting to build behind his eyes. It had been one of those days when every case went cold and everyone spent the day in a cloud of frustration. Most of the time, Tobias loved his job with the forensics department, but some days it was just a bit too much.

The air outside was cold, and Tobias pulled his jacket around himself, head down as he marched towards his car. One of the streetlamps was flickering, and he tried not to look at it in case it made his head feel any worse.

Once he was safely sequestered inside his car, Tobias allowed himself to take a deep breath.

Today had sucked. End of. Tomorrow would be a fresh start, hopefully with some new leads. The autopsy report should have been finalised on the McAdams case, so there would be something new to do. It would all be just fine.

Feeling a bit more settled, Tobias turned the key and felt the car stutter to life. Carefully, he reversed out of the parking space and pulled off down the road.

He almost didn’t notice the grey figure watching him from behind the window.

Tobias blinked. It could just be the migraine. One figure didn’t mean... but there she was again, stood by the traffic lights, her hair swaying gently in the non-existent breeze.

Swearing under his breath, Tobias took a quick right, deciding to take the scenic route home.

When he was younger, Tobias had wanted to be an astronaut. Later, he’d decided to be a rockstar, then a teacher, before finally settling on a professional boxer. His father had laughed at the proclamation and swatted him around the head with his belt. (Not that that was unusual). His mother had smiled in her usual indulgent way, then signed him up for kickboxing lessons.

To everyone’s surprise, he absolutely loved it. He practised diligently to improve his technique and took up ballet to help with flexibility and improving the speed of his feet. When his father tried to mock him for the ballet and called him a little queer, Tobias hit back for the first time. One broken nose later and his father never hit him again.

He was still on track to try going professional when his grandmother died.

Rosa hadn’t lived near to Tobias and is parents, and he had barely known her, so it wasn’t that upsetting. But when they travelled up for the funeral, he found a grey old woman – literally grey, like a character from a black-and-white movie – standing by the coffin as it was lowered into the ground.

“I had a good life.” She smiled, before glancing straight at Tobias.

That was how Tobias found out that he could see the dead.

It wasn’t often that the dead stayed on Earth. Tobias didn’t know where most of them went, but it wasn’t anywhere he could see. But sometimes, for a variety of reasons, people didn’t move on. They weren’t ghosts – they were solid, at least to Tobias, although he supposed they weren’t tangible to anyone else – but they weren’t people either. They were just... the dead. It was hard to describe. Not that he could ever describe it to anyone.

After that revelation, Tobias had changed his plans. He decided to join the police force as a forensics specialist, looking into mysterious deaths. He figured that his apparent ability to communicate with the dead would help.

Of course, most moved on, so it actually didn’t help – and even when he spoke to them, he couldn’t exactly say,

“Benny did it because Sharon told me so, even though she’s dead.”

He still liked his job. In a way, he thought it was better than boxing would have been. But occasionally, it was complicated by appearance’s like this one.

From the brief glimpses Tobias got as he drove towards home – another as her form appeared briefly at the side of the road – he could tell he didn’t know her. She was young – perhaps sixteen – and had an innocence about her that most of the dead lacked. But she’d sought him out, so she must have a reason to have stayed behind, instead of travelling with the rest of the dead.

He put off the inevitable for as long as possible, turning down a road that he knew had roadworks, but eventually he pulled up outside his house. Slowly, he turned off the car and glanced out of the window.

She had sat herself down on the bench outside his porch, her legs swinging – although the swing didn’t move. Her expression was peaceful, but Tobias knew that the dead were rarely at peace.

It was late enough that his neighbours were all hidden behind closed curtains, and no-one was about on the street. Tobias felt comfortable enough to give her a smile as he got out of the car, locking it behind him.

“So, what brings you here?” He called out, walking towards her grey figure.

The girl started, almost as though she hadn’t expected him to see her. It was a common response – the dead still had all their memories, and they remembered that humans couldn’t see dead people.

“You’re Four?”

Tobias nodded. “When I need to be.”

As he got closer, he thought she might have been pretty, in life. Her eyes glittered and her face was youthful without being too young. In fact, with her well-defined cheekbones and straight hair, she might even have been his type.

“I got stuck.”

Tobias sat himself down on the bench next to her. It was still bitterly cold, and he would rather be inside, but sometimes the dead reacted badly to being invited into a home of the living.

“I can see that. Would you mind telling me your name?”

“Tris. Beatrice Prior, but my friends called me Tris.”

It was a pretty name – it suited her, Tobias decided. But it didn’t sound familiar. She wasn’t murdered then – or if she was, she wasn’t local and it had been hushed up. Unlikely to be a suicide either. Cancer, perhaps, although she didn’t look emaciated, and her hair proved that she hadn’t been having chemotherapy.

“That’s a nice name. Now, I hate to pry, but I’m assuming you’ve come to me to help you move on. I can’t do that unless I know how you died.”

Predictably, Tris stiffened.

“You don’t have to tell me today. We can just talk, if you want.”

“I drowned.”

Tobias blinked. That was swift – but it did make his job easier. Which was good, because this migraine was worsening, and he had a feeling he’d have to go inside and puke in a minute.

“By accident? Or was someone else responsible?”

“I never learnt to swim. My boyfriend, Peter... we were in the park, sitting by the lake, and he suggested we go for a swim. I’d never told him I didn’t know how. I was about to say no when he pushed me in. I don’t think he meant it – he just didn’t know. When I didn’t come up, he panicked... I think he ran to get help, but I blacked out before he got back.” Tris’s eyes had filled with tears.

Tobias’s brain couldn’t believe that it was entirely an accident. Besides, pushing someone in a lake when you didn’t definitely know they could swim was idiotic. Running away without telling them, even if it was to get help, was even more assholeish. Even if Peter hadn’t meant to kill her, he hadn’t been behaving nicely.

But that didn’t explain why she was stuck.

“As you were dying... did you want to stay behind? Did you have something to say to someone? Peter, perhaps?”

Tris shook her head. “I pretty much gave up. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t see any way out of it. I really couldn’t swim, and it was going so dark...” She trailed off.

“Ok.” Tobias realised that his hands no longer felt cold, and instead he could barely feel them at all. That wasn’t a good sign. “I’m going to go inside now, before I get hypothermia and end up joining you. I wouldn’t be much help then. I’m inviting you inside now, if you want to continue to talk to me, but otherwise we can continue this tomorrow. I’ll do a little research into your case and look for reasons why you might have stayed behind if you didn’t really want to.”

He stood up, wincing at the sudden shot of pins and needles through his foot. His head swam a bit, and for a moment he worried he might puke. Fumbling with the door, he held it open and glanced at Tris.

She looked at the door uncertainly, before scurrying in.

The dead didn’t need to move like humans, but some preferred to walk when they were interacting with him. It made them feel less dead, Tobias supposed. But his head was pounding and the nausea was becoming overwhelming, so he didn’t want to think too much about it. Instead, he closed the door and went to throw up in the toilet.

When he returned, Tris had curled herself up on the sofa, her feet tucked under and her eyes surveying the room nervously. She looked out of place against the brilliant red colour, but Tobias was struck again by how she must have been beautiful once. Still, it was almost sad when someone was beautiful in death. A body that was still so perfect had never been used to its full potential.

“Sorry about that.”

“Isn’t it weird?”

For a moment, her question threw Tobias. “What, migraines?”

“Talking to the dead.”

“It was at first.” He answered honestly. “I suppose it still is. But I saw my first dead person when I was thirteen, and in the last nine years I’ve adjusted. You can be desensitised to anything if it happens enough. Even seeing dead people.”

“What do I look like to you?”

“Grey.” The answer was somewhat blunt, and Tobias immediately moved to rectify it. “Like you’re in a black-and-white film. You’re not translucent or anything, just... grey.”

“You glow. Everything alive glows. It’s bright, and it makes my head hurt, but it’s beautiful at the same time. It’s how the dead identify those who can talk to us, you know. You glow a different colour. Most people are white, but you have... more of a yellow, or gold. It’s hard to describe.”

“You’ve spoken to other dead people?”

“My brother.” She glanced away at the question, as if she didn’t want to talk about it.

“He’s stuck too?”

“Sort of. I get the impression he wants to be here. It took me ages to persuade him to tell me how I could help myself move on.”

Tris still sounded reticent, so Tobias dropped the topic. It was getting late, and he didn’t feel like eating after throwing up. An early night would do him some good, provided he could actually sleep.

“I ought to go to bed now, really. You’re perfectly welcome to stay, but I know you can’t sleep, so if you want to leave please feel free.”

“I can stay?”

“If you want.” Tobias expected that she’d get bored soon enough, but Tris was dead – it wasn’t like she could do any harm or disturb the neighbours.

He got ready for bed quickly, pulling off his clothes and just leaving his boxers. He took a moment to brush his teeth, glancing at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror and noting that he really hadn’t had enough sleep recently. Maybe that explained the escalating migraines. Finally done, he clambered into bed and went to switch out the light, only noticing Tris stood beside him at the last moment.

“Goodnight, Tris.” He smiled.

She gave him an unsure smile in return.

“Goodnight.” She replied, before laying her hand gently on his arm.

Something blinding ripped its way through Tobias’s mind, pain and pleasure and a million other things too sharp to try and focus on. His body flinched out of the way automatically, and Tris stepped back, already looking deeply regretful.

“I’m sorry.” She vanished.

For a few minutes, all Tobias could do was lie there and breathe.

What had that been about? Why had she tried to touch him? She was dead – the dead didn’t belong with the living.

But in the back of his mind, he couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful she was – and the tiny spark of hope that had come alight at her touch.

**Author's Note:**

> Tris's death:
> 
> Tris is drowned by her then-boyfriend (Peter) pushing her in a lake. She never learnt how to swim. It's left deliberately ambiguous whether or not he meant for her to die.


End file.
